EARLY IN THE MORNING.
Early the next morning Jane Kelly came into the ward, pale and
heavy-eyed, as if she had been watching all night. Her step was heavy
and reluctant as she moved down between that double row of beds,
glancing furtively over them toward a distant cot, which was that
morning the only point of interest for her. As she drew near that bed,
the woman grew pale and paler. She hesitated and turned aside; now
settling the blanket over some patient; now stopping to move a pillow,
but all the time drawing nearer and nearer to that one spot.
At last she came to a bed where a woman lay with a child on her arm, in
the deepest and most deathly slumber that ever fell upon a human being
who lived to see the daylight again. The plump, round face was white as
snow under the voluminous ruffles of a cap, quilled like a dahlia and
radiating round her head like a sun-flower. Purple shadows lay all
around her closed eyes, and gave a deathly hue to her lips, which were
just ajar, revealing the edges of strong, white teeth underneath.
“What’s the matter here?” cried the terrified nurse, seizing Mrs. Dillon
by the shoulders, and shaking her till the cap trembled in all its
borders.
Mary Margaret fell back heavily from those disturbing hands, but neither
opened her eyes nor gave a struggle; her head descended like a log to
the pillow, and one hand dropped over the side of the couch heavily,
like the hand of a dead person.
Jane Kelly’s exclamation had disturbed some of the sleepers nearest to
Mrs. Dillon’s bed. One or two started up and cried out,—
“What’s the matter? Dear me, what’s the matter?”
“Nothing is the matter!” answered the nurse curtly, “only some sleep
heavy and some don’t, that’s all.”
Then the sleepers settled down to rest again, and Jane, after placing
her hand on the woman’s chest to be sure that her heart was stirring,
went hurriedly down the ward, so frightened by what she had seen, that
she was ready to rush upon anything that was to come.
She found a lovely young face nestled close down to the head of an
infant, pale, certainly, but with the flush which lies in the heart of a
white rose just dawning on her cheek, and a smile hovering around her
faintly parted lips.
Again Kelly uttered a cry of surprise—hushed on the moment of its
outbreak—she stood over the young mother frightened and pallid, with the
upper lip lifted from her teeth, like that of a dog who longs to snarl
aloud and dares not. She looked around to make sure that none of the
patients were watching her, then bent her head close to that smiling
mouth, and listened for the breath which was so hateful to her.
Yes, the girl breathed. Still the movement of her chest was almost
imperceptible. The perfume of a flower could have been felt almost as
distinctly as the respiration that kept the dew upon her lips. But Jane
Kelly was too wise in her experience not to know that this was a
healthful sleep; that the rich vitality of youth was there, and nothing
baneful, as she had expected and hoped. The child stirred and dropped
its little hand like a rose-leaf on that fair neck. Then the smile
deepened, and the blue eyes opened.
“Oh, you haven’t come to take him from me! he has been so good all
night. Let him stay, let him stay, nurse!”
“That will be as the doctor wishes, I reckon,” answered the nurse, in
her worst mood, for she was greatly disturbed. “It isn’t that young
fellow, let me tell you—this is one who won’t listen to no nonsense, if
he thinks it isn’t good for you or the young one; you won’t get leave to
keep him now, I tell you.”
“But it is good for me, I am sure of that, and this poor little baby,
too; see how sweetly it sleeps.”
Jane Kelly gave a sidelong look at the child, muttered something about
the ridiculousness of setting children to take care of children, and
flung herself away from the bed.
Directly, Jane went again to the cot on which Mary Margaret Dillon was
sleeping, what might prove the sleep of death. Seizing the woman by both
shoulders, she half lifted her from the bed, and shook her vigorously.
Putting her mouth down to the sealed ear, she shouted forth a fierce
oath that aroused every patient in the ward, but had no effect upon the
sleeper.
Jane Kelly was terribly frightened. It might not be long before the
doctor would come in, for some of the patients were in great danger, and
he usually visited such very early in the morning. If he found Mrs.
Dillon still insensible, and so deathly white, an explanation would be
demanded, and Jane Kelly trembled to think of the result.
This apprehension made the nurse desperate. All her efforts had failed
to reach the sealed senses of the woman whose sleep threatened to be
eternal. As a last resort, she snatched up the child, and shook it till
its teeth would have chattered had such appendages been yet given to its
mouth; as it was, the little fellow set up a yell that would have done
credit to the wildest pappoose of the wildest Indian that ever lived—a
yell that reached the locked brain of the woman, and set the warm
motherly blood to beating in her heart. The deathly look went out from
Mary Margaret’s face. The lips began to stir; her heavy eyelids were
slowly lifted; she turned over on her side, muttering,—
“Was it the mother’s darlint?”
I think Jane Kelly must have pinched young Ireland directly after this,
for he set up another war-whoop, and this time Mary Margaret started up
in her bed and began to feel blindly around for the child, muttering to
herself, and rocking to and fro; a moment after, she fell upon her side,
and sunk into a sound sleep again, from which all the efforts of the
nurse could not arouse her.
In less than an hour, the doctor did, in fact, come into the ward, in
order to visit one or two patients who required constant attention. It
would have been easy enough for Jane Kelly to have concealed the
condition of Mrs. Dillon; but young Ireland happened to choose that
moment for a new outbreak. He was getting hungry and did not like the
state of things in his neighborhood at all, and there was no way of
appeasing him short of absolute choking, a process Jane Kelly longed to
put in force, but dared not.
“What is the matter here?” inquired the doctor; “why don’t the woman
take care of her child? This noise will play the mischief with my
patients. Wake her up, nurse, and have the little fellow silenced.”
“But I can’t; she won’t wake up,” said Jane desperately.
“Won’t wake up; why?” said the doctor, stepping close to Mrs. Dillon’s
cot. “Dear me, what is this? Has she taken anything?”
“Yes,” said Jane Kelly, with prompt falsehood, “brandy. She had visitors
yesterday. I found the bottle under her bed empty.”
“Brandy, and this comes of it. There must be bad management here, Jane
Kelly.”
Jane made no answer, but busied herself in arranging the room.